The real origin of the blog was actually a group email from work. Around 2007 or 2008, I started sending a audio file or two to a couple of my co-workers who also enjoyed the blues on Friday mornings. Word got around and others asked to be included to the list, and soon I was including people who didn't work with me, so it got to be a pretty good-sized list of folks.
Sometime, along the way, I started including little information tidbits about the songs and the artists responsible. Since I listened to the blues a lot and read about the blues a lot, it wasn't that big a deal....I could usually knock an email out in a few minutes and everyone seemed to enjoy the information I was providing.
Near the end of 2009, I got an email from one of my bosses (who was on the Friday Blues Fix email list) saying that IT was complaining about file sizes being sent, which is kind of funny now, given the size files that go through emails these days, so he told me that I needed to stop sending them after the one that I had worked on for that Friday. At that point, the Friday Blues Fix email group concluded with little fanfare and hubbub.
While I was doing the emails, one of my co-workers, Brent Parks, said that I should consider starting a blog about the blues. He had started a few websites about different subjects, one of them being about the blues (he was a fan, too), and he thought it might be fun for me to try. For starters, he just attached some of my CD reviews from Blues Bytes and that was pretty cool. For kicks, I decided to do a Ten Questions with Larry Garner, who I had been corresponding with via email, and he included that on his site. I later recycled it as one of FBF's earliest posts back in 2010.
Also for kicks, we sat down and worked up a Friday Blues Fix ezine of sorts which included reviews, interviews, and blues news items. We never got past setting it up as a Word document prototype at the time and I kick myself for not keeping a copy of it because it would have been neat to see some 16 or 17 years later, but I haven't been able to track it down.
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| First FBF post - February 12, 2010 |
That's about as far as we got for a little while until one weekend early in 2010, I finally decided that I'd give it a try. I got into Blogger and started puttering around with a site, doing a lot of trial and error until I had it like I wanted it. In setting up a blog, I wanted to have something in place that (1) I enjoyed doing and (2) would be a solid source of information for both old blues fans and new ones.
One of the things that really helped me in doing the blog was that I had been listening to the blues faithfully for almost twenty-five years, and by that time I had covered a lot of ground. As I've said, I really enjoyed The Blues Brothers and the music that they played, so they led me to a lot of music that I'd never heard before. I think they led a lot of blues fans to the music during that period.I had started leaning more into the soul, R&B, and blues-rock veins with Stax soul, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, and the Fabulous Thunderbirds after music started becoming more computerized and sterile in the mid 80's, but I've always liked to trace things back to their beginnings, so I managed to unearth a lot of great blues from the 50's, 60's, and 70's, and later on from the 20's, 30's, and 40's.
I had also read whatever I could find about the blues......as I've said many times, Peter Guralnick, Robert Palmer, Stanley Booth, Bill Ferris, Robert Gordon, Dick Waterman, and many other authors were indispensable sources of information for me.
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| Thanks to Bill Steber for allowing me to use his pictures for the blog header. |
Another source who provided me with a lot of information many years earlier was a man from Houston named Jim Shortt. I met Jim on the old Blues Access message board - Blues Access was an excellent blues magazine that, with Living Blues, provided me with a lot of information about old and new artists and that message board was just wonderful to a relatively new listener. At the time, I was listening to a lot of Excello blues and that's how Jim and I connected. Jim knew a lot of the folks that I listened to and he also introduced me to the world of Duke and Peacock Records. He knew many of the artists who recorded on those sessions and he had endless stories about those guys and many others. I had started writing album reviews for Blues Bytes in 1999 and he was a big help to me in learning how to write reviews. We also exchanged mix CDs back and forth of our favorite artists (his were much cooler than mine).
Unfortunately, Jim passed away in 2009, a few months before I decided to start this blog. I'd like to think that he would have probably contributed a few posts himself in the early years, like my friend Joe Goff, who I met through work. He contributed a couple of posts about B.B. King and Robert Nighthawk in the blog's early years. Sadly, I've lost track of Joe because he changed jobs several years ago, but I know he's still listening to the blues somewhere in a big way and I'd welcome any additional posts he'd like to contribute.
Over the years, we came up with several recurring topics, such as Ten Questions With....., Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Five Discs You Might Have Missed, the Mount Bluesmore series, etc..... We also did some profiles on blues legends, took a look at some of the great blues labels, looked at various blues songs, including a couple of my Blues Fix Mix discs that I compiled for friends and family. I plan to revisit some of those topics because I think people enjoyed them.
It was always a lot of fun to try and figure out what to write about each week. There was so much material to work with. Friday Blues Fix managed to publish every Friday for over seven years, until things just got too hectic in my everyday life. We had taken on some additional family responsibilities at home that took a lot of extra attention and that extended into some other family issues that developed along the way, so that, with work responsibilities took up most of my blogging time. I managed to crank out a few posts over the years and I was able to continue writing reviews for Blues Bytes during my spare time, so I wasn't completely away.
After a few fits and starts over the last couple of years, I'm hopeful that Friday Blues Fix is finally settling back into a groove. I appreciate those visitors who have stuck around through all the fits and starts, and welcome any new visitors to the blog who have showed up in recent months. I know that the blog is sort of an archaic way to communicate these days, but hey, I still listen to CDs so I'm sure there are others out there who still like to do things "the old way." Please be patient with us and stick around.....there's more to come, I promise.
Also, thanks to everyone who helped guide me into and through this process for their invaluable advice, suggestions, criticisms, and praise.
